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THE LORD'S DAY 



RESCUED 



REV. ALEXANDER J. SESSIONS 




BOSTON 
D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY 

32 Franklin Street 



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Copyright, 1883. 
D. LoTHROP & Company. 



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INTRODUCTION. 

He who goes through life missing the strange 
significance to himself of the number seven, makes 
a serious and sad mistake. Of all numerals, 
this is prince and king. Essays to the amount of 
volumes have been written in theory and expla- 
nation upon it, and even Cicero called it reritni 
om7iiwn fere 7iodus, *' the bond of all things." The 
simple fact appears to be that this number was appro- 
priated as a time-marker at the earliest stage of 
history knowledge of which remains, and has come 
down especially in the Jewish Sabbath and the 
Christian Lord's Day to the present time. 

There is abundant proof that the Former of our 
bodies and the Father of our spirits, remembering 
that need which himself had caused to exist In 
the physical and mental no less than in the 
moral constitution of our humanity, from the begin- 
ning ordained a seventh-day rest, to wind up the 

3 



4 INTRODUCTION, 

complex machine for its running through each six 
days of work. Thus — call it Sabbath, Sunday, 
Lord's Day, First Day, or what you will — for 
men who desire and mean to be men, this is an 
indispensable recuperative. It is not merely what 
the poet calls it, " day of all the week the best," 
but it is the day of all the week whose right 
understanding and use are most vital to human 
welfare. It is like men to tend towards over- 
doing. And they to whom religious restraint and 
observance on these seventh-days have been irk- 
some, and seemed irrational, and who have 
therefore ignored all specifically Christian keeping 
of them, have been very apt to go further, and 
failing to note any vital connection of any sort 
between this septenary arrangement and their own 
well-being and doing, sink all distinction between 
such and other days. They have thus made 
another thing for health and strength, for work 
and play, as well as for restraint and instruction, 
of the Sabbath — and of the weeks, as well — 
from that which was in the great shaping thought 
of their Creator for them ; or that beneficially real- 
ized by their more religious — if you please, 
** Puritanic" — fellow-citizens. And this has been 
going on until it has to a degree pervaded almost 



INTBODUCTION. 5 

all communities, and spread far and wide the ill 
and chill of its miasma. 

He deserves well, then, equally of the world as of 
the Church, who with a heart full of personal convic- 
tion, undertakes the honest endeavor to do something 
to counteract this public drift alike toward temporal 
damagis and spiritual unrighteousness, and heroically 
seeks to re-enthrone the Lord's Day as lord of all 
days. I am persuaded that these pages of my friend 
of many years ought to carry conviction to the 
doubter and denier, as I am sure they cannot 
fail to carry edification and comfort to those who 
are so happy as already wisely to love and purely 
to keep the Sabbath. 

HENRY M. DEXTER. 

Greystones, New Bedford, 
March 26, 1883. 



A LETTER FROM PROFESSOR JEWETT. 

Rev. a. J, Sessions : 

Dear Brother : I return your 
timely monograph, " The Lord's Day Rescued," 
with thanks for the privilege of perusal. The 
gratification which this perusal has afforded me 
awakens a corresponding desire to see the trea- 
tise put into permanent form. Not that the 
subject is new or that it has failed of exhaustive 
treatment, but that your concise, direct, and fruit- 
ful chapters will attract attention and carry 
conviction when the fuller treatises will remain 
unread. You traverse, it is true, a well-trodden 
field, but you do it in a method all your own, 
at a time when the old paths seem nearly oblit- 
erated, and under the impulse of an urgent 
necessity. Without fail, send forth your earnest 
summons of the faithful to the rescue of the Lord's 
day, that, whether it be heeded or not, you may 
have the consciousness of having done what you 
could to effect an end so desirable and imperative. 
Fraternally yours, 

GEO. B. JEWETT. 
Salem, December 3, 1881. 

6 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I. 
The Sabbath instituted by God in Eden for all 

Mankind 9 

CHAPTER II. 

The Sabbath from the time of Adam to the 

time of Christ . . . . , .18 

CHAPTER III. 

The Sabbath as kept by Christ . . . .32 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Sabbath transmuted into the Lord's Day . 43 

CHAPTER V. 
The Lord's Day to be pre-eminently prized . 59 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Lord's Day to be immediately Rescued . 90 



The Lord's Day Rescued, 



CHAPTER I. 

THE SABBATH INSTITUTED BY GOD IN EDEN 
FOR ALL MANKIND. 

THE supreme announcement is this : 
"And God blessed the seventh day 
and sanctified it." The question here is, to 
the exclusion of all other questions, has our 
present Sabbath, the Lord's day, its founda- 
tion in this announcement ? I believe that 
it has. The passage of Scripture means just 
what it says. One day in seven is set apart 
by God for rest in him ; for his worship and 
for special ways of serving and enjoying him. 
Did not Moses, the man of God, intend that 

9 



10 THE LORD'S DAY RESCUED, 

we should understand the passage in this 
way, and in no other ? As separated from 
all other questions, it would first strike the 
mind, so would he have it received by the 
whole world. This interpretation does not 
force Scripture, any more than it makes 
Scripture, and herein it has the advantage 
over some other explanations. The reason 
for setting apart such a day is treasured up 
in this : God ^* rested on the seventh day from 
all his work which he had made." But we 
read the claims of God, and the welfare of 
mankind, in the very declaration of such an 
institution. Reasons for it are enwrapped in 
its nature, as really as that the institution 
itself is the mind and will of God. They 
chime with the words of one greater than 
Moses, uttered so long afterwards ; howbeit, 
Christ made use of them for a nobler, imme- 
diate purpose : '^ The Sabbath was made for 
man ;'' man, in his sinfulness, his wants, his 
obligations, benefits, opportunities ; man as 



THE LORD'S DAY RESCUED. 11 

he has existed from Adam, and begun in 
Adam, and for man as long as man shall 
exist. 

Here is the Lord's day. It is here, or 
it is found nowhere, and we have it not. 
Faint references to the Sabbath in early 
times, and explicit mention twenty-five hun- 
dred years after it was instituted, strengthen 
our convictions ; but convictions and refer- 
ences originate here. Infidelity, pride of 
intellect, violence of attack, the necessi- 
ties of geology, may not dare to obstruct 
the meaning of the text by Moses as to 
the Sabbath. Whether you regard his 
history of the earth's first civilized week 
as literal or not literal, your notion need 
not affect his account of the Sabbath. We 
know what the writer meant as to that 
day. The Sabbath stands when interpre- 
tations of geologist or theologian fall. It 
stands whether you were to regard the 
week's narrative as a sober statement, or 



12 THE LOEB'S BAY BESCUEB. 

a panoramic presentation ; as strictly his- 
torical, or as phenomenal, or pictorial ; as 
a prose digest, or an Oriental poem. It 
stands whether you think that the word 
''created" means, an absolute creation or 
the reduction of "chaos and old night" 
into order ages after the creation ; whether 
the absolute creation spoken of there, when- 
ever it took place, concerned our planet 
only — and it is the object of Moses to 
give account of ohj^ planet — or took in 
the solar system, and ''the stars also;" 
whether the geological ages lie in the 
chasm between the first verse of Genesis, 
which says, " In the beginning God cre- 
ated the heaven and the earth," and the 
second verse, which says, " And the earth 
was without form and void," or you find 
these ages bestowed elsewhere. We need 
not trouble our brain about the length 
of a geological day. Moses has settled 
for us the length of the Sabbath day. 



THE LORD'S DAY RESCUED. 13 

Nay, it comes in the course of his narra- 
tive to be measured by the sun just as 
we have it now. If you would buttress 
this view, turn to the language used at 
Sinai. ''Six days shalt thou "labor, and 
do all thy work. But^ the seventh day 
is the Sabbath." Mackay, whom I met 
abroad, a fair-minded, scholarly, but ration- 
alistic author, presents this point, in his 
work, ''Progress of the Intellect." "The 
cosmogony of Genesis, like that of the 
Tendavesta, is arranged under six periods 
or subdivisions ; but instead of the chro- 
nology of the year it adopts that of the 
week : and there can be little doubt that 
the principal object of the writer in this 
distribution of his subject was to sanction 
the observance of the seventh day by 
claiming the appointment of God for it. 
To understand the days of creation in 
any other than the usual sense would 
therefore disappoint the probable inten- 



U THE LOBI>'S DAY BESCUED. 

tion.'' We will both cleave to the inten- 
tion of Moses, and risk his honesty and 
his competency in this high matter. Mac- 
kay says again : ^' From very early times, 
the Hebrews had ascribed a religious rev- 
erence to the seventh day, or dies Satumi, 
It would appear from the whole of Gen- 
esis, as well as from the use of the word 
^remember,' in the fourth commandment, 
that the observance of the Sabbath was 
long anterior to the Levitical law in its 
present shape. The institution was sup- 
posed to have originated with Jehovah 
at the creation.'' Turn to a recent, emi- 
nent commentator. Dr. Murphy. '' The 
days of this creation are natural days of 
twenty-four hours each. We may not 
depart from the ordinary meaning of the 
word without a sufficient warrant either 
in the text of Scripture, or in the law 
of nature. But we have not yet found 
any such warrant." Does not human 



THE LORD'S BAY RESCUED. 15 

wisdom stop right there? Moses wrote 
to common sense, to a beheving mind, 
and for the uncritical eye, just as things 
do appear to mind and eye. And we are 
safe and happy in thinking that he wrote 
better than he knew ; as John in Patmos 
had visions which he could not all take 
in, but his words are the right w^ords 
for us, his imagery the right imagery, 
and all looks to the reality of things. 
The simplest view of the creation Sab- 
bath, if not of this whole matter of the 
creation of our planet, or the reduction of 
things into order, is doubtless the best 
view ; best for the common reader, best 
for the biblical student, best for the 
geologist. Difficulties, on the one hand, 
and the other, theories, assertions, con- 
jectures, infidel notions, do all leave the 
record by Moses precisely where we first 
find it Of a certainty, geology cannot 
mend the Sabbath view, as an institution, 



16 THE LORD'S BAY RESCUED. 

then and there, and must not venture 
to meddle with it. I believe in geology 
and know something of it ; the reader 
believes in it, but v/e may all first 
believe in Moses. Geology lacks an 
interpreter much more than Genesis. 
And the sober fact is, that neither the 
theories of geologists, nor of biblical 
scholars, meet the full case of those 
brave old events in the history of the 
earth's first week. Disputants cannot 
handle the materials they have, whether 
you also say that they lack materials, 
or do not lack them. Of different schemes, 
which one is it that is consistent with 
facts, or with itself.^ Professor Gibbs in 
the Theological Seminary of Yale College, 
a painstaking, most cautious scholar in 
Hebrew, after several lessons on the first 
chapter of Genesis, quoted to our class, 
with his own dry look, the words of the 
perplexed old divine : '* The first week 



THE LOBB'S BAY RESCUEB. H 

of our world was a week of wonders." 
But in any event, the man of God, 
Moses, has ehminated for us the grand 
matter of the Sabbath, the Lord's day. 
There we will rest it, and be at rest 
ourselves. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE SABBATH FROM THE TIME OF ADAM TO 
THE TIME OF CHRIST. 

YOU are not at the outset to look for 
explicit Scripture statements. It was 
the morning twilight of the world's his- 
tory ; the periods of the fragment of a 
fragment. We shall have hints rather 
than narrative. Incidents leap from point 
to point, in broad intervals of time. 
Very references to the Sabbath will be 
shadowy and faint and not made up at 
last. Infidel men foolishly fall into this 
kind of Scripture chasm. They like to 
dio- a pit for themselves. Havins: shown 
us the Sabbath, Moses feels that it is 

always implied. Non-observance w^ould 

18 



THE LOBD'S DAY RESCUED, 19 

not arsfue that God had not made such 
a day. Whether kept, or not kept, Moses, 
as historian, is not bound to tell, or to 
know. But when after twenty-five hundred 
years we do hear him speak the word. 
" Sabbath," the name comes to you as 
a name easily sounded, and as fully 
regarded. A confirmatory consideration. 
You will find a period of one thousand 
years, closing on the return of the Cap- 
tivity, where, in a consolidated state of 
society, the Sabbath is mentioned but 
five times. In the times of Joshua, the 
Judges, Samuel and Saul, a space of 
five hundred years, there is no mention 
of the Sabbath ; did it therefore not exist ? 
Going back apace, did not Adam have 
the Sabbath, and did not the penitent man 
keep it ? But where is the record ? His 
own day covers a period of nearly a 
thousand years, thus bridging over a 
large part of the early gap as to the 



20 THE LORD'S DAY RESCUED, 

Sabbath, and showing us how gaps can 
be bridged over. Would not the pious 
Seth know the Sabbath ? Would not 
Enos and Enoch? Would Noah, a 
preacher of righteousness, do less ? In 
one period of eight hundred years, or 
from Joshua to Jeremiah, not a word is 
said of circumcision ; but did not the 
Jews keep to their circumcision ? 

But we turn now to hints of the 
Sabbath. For some distinct reason, time 
came early to be marked off by sevens, 
or by the week. What was that reason ? 
The expressions in the Hebrew, are : 
^^ After days yet seven;" ^* after a hep- 
tade of days." Professor Stuart asks: 
^' How came this heptade of days to be 
thus distinguished ? From what else 
could it spring but from the original 
institution of the Sabbath ? " Noah made 
express use, in different forms, of this 
heptade of days. And he ^' built an altar 



THE LOBD'S DAY BESCUED, 21 

unto the Lord/' immediately upon com- 
ing out of the ark. Does not this look 
like Sabbath-day worship ? The patriarchs, 
wherever they pitched their tents for a 
length of time, ''built an altar/' May 
not that altar have been allied to the 
Sabbath ? Piety, altar, worship, the Sab- 
bath. 

This heptade division of time obtained 
beyond the Hebrew boundaries ; as among 
the Assyrians, Egyptians, Arabians, in the 
East, and among Britons, Gauls, Germans 
in the West. Where did the heptade come 
from .^ Laplace says, ''The week is per- 
haps the most ancient and incontestable 
monument of human knowledge.'' It is 
remarkable that we should have such dis- 
tinct reference, and so far back, to the Sab- 
bath, by pagan writers. Homer says, "Af- 
terwards came the seventh, the sacred day." 
Hesiod says, "The seventh day is holy." 
Callimachus refers to the seventh day as 



22 THE LOBB'S BAY RESCUEB. 

holy ; and Lucian speaks of it as ^^ given 
to schoolboys as a holiday." Then Jose- 
phus, with other light, has said, '* There 
is no city, either of Greeks or barbarians, 
or any other nation, wliere the religion of 
the Sabbath is not known," Porphyry said, 
*'The Phoenicians consecrated one day in 
seven as holy." Grotius has it, *'The mem- 
ory of the creation being performed in seven 
days was preserved, not only among the 
Greeks and Italians, but among Celts and 
Indians, all of whom divided their time into 
weeks. And Eusebius says, ^^ Almost all 
the philosophers and poets acknowledge 
the seventh day as holy." 

About the time of the birth of Enos, 
while Adam was yet young, ''begun men 
to call upon the name of the Lord." Pro- 
fessor Stuart says of this, '' It can mean 
neither less nor more here, as I think, 
than that public social worship then com- 
menced ; that is, so soon as men begun to 



THE LOBD'S DAY BESCUED. 23 

multiply. The writer does not mean to 
intimate that pious Seth did not pray be- 
fore his son was born to him ; what can he 
intimate but social worship? " Have we not, 
then, a ray of light here, a flash, a per- 
manent side-light upon the Sabbath as 
connected with this public worship, and 
upon public worship as connected with 
the Sabbath? 

But now we come to a very emphatic 
recognition of the Sabbath. It is in that 
gigantic struggle of Moses with Pharaoh 
for the deliverance of the Hebrews. The 
summons of God to Pharaoh was, '^ Let 
my people go, that they may hold a feast 
unto me in the wilderness." This looks 
to the inherited lost Sabbath. That day 
would be the culmination of a sacred fes- 
tival, if indeed the festival were not di- 
rectly meant here, agreeably wath the num- 
bering of it with the ''feasts" in Leviticus 
xxiii. 23. God's people had no festival so 



24 THE LOEB'S BAY RESCUEB. 

high as the Sabbath. Moses gives us an 
account of its institution, makes references 
to it further on, and would he not now know 
and keep the Sabbath in the wilderness ? 
For the pre-existence of the day was a rea- 
son for the deliverance from Egypt, and 
not, as a few argue, the deliverance the 
reason for instituting the day. Before the 
giving of the ten commandments, the double 
bounty of the manna on the sixth day 
marked out the Sabbath, as did the very 
words of Moses at that point ; and when 
the Sinai commandment does come, the 
grand old reason for the Sabbath — six 
da3^s of labor and then one of rest — is 
there repeated. Nor does it militate against 
this view, that Moses should draw a fresh 
obligation for observing the Sabbath-day, 
from the fact that He who had instituted 
it in Eden had now brought the Hebrews 
out of the bondage of Egypt. On the same 
principle, the Sabbath could be a '^sign" 



THE LORD'S BAY RESCUED. 25 

of a covenant between God and the Israel- 
ites, while in fact the day, long, long be- 
fore this, w^as made for all the peoples of 
the earth. It was virtually a sign between 
God and Abraham, but it had a being be- 
fore Abraham was. The very record is, 
*^ It is a sio:n between me and the Children 
of Israel forever ; for in six days the Lord 
made heaven and earth, and on the sev- 
enth day he rested and was refreshed." 
The late Rev. A. A. Phelps, in his earnest 
little volume on the Sabbath, thus fitly 
speaks : '' As the question of American 
freedom was once wrapped up in the sim- 
ple question of a three-penny tax on tea, 
so the question of Hebrew freedom was 
in this case wrapped up in the question 
whether they should have their Sabbath. 
Practically, as a means to its appropriate 
end, the great question at issue between 
God and Pharaoh, in respect to the deliv- 
erance of the Israelites, was that of the 



26 THE LOBD'S DAY BESCUED, 

Sabbath, with its connected privileges and 
rights." 

But sure it is, the Hebrews found the 
Sabbath in the wilderness — found it be- 
fore the giving of the law. They came 
to it by natural succession and restoration ; 
by birthright. 

And as had been hinted beforehand, 
God now puts his own signet to it by 
that stupendous twofold miracle of food 
out of the skies, with the double supply 
on the sixth day for the sake of the 
seventh, when they could *^not find it 
in the field." Such a kind of withhold- 
ing of the food was like the wonder of 
creating it at all. Moses had foretold this 
story of the manna to the host of his 
followers, and after a small bad show of 
disobedience, and the shock of the pen- 
alty, everybody came to look for the 
miracle of the Sabbath cessation. 

But behold, how God now incorporates 



THE LORD'S DAY RESCUED, '21 

the Sabbath into his own law, as given 
amid those scenes of Sinai. It is made one 
of the ten diamonds on a golden cord 
which must never be broken. Other 
jewels than the Sabbath would drop off. 
And it is verily a '' commandment," not 
a recommendation, left to the choices of 
mankind ; a command to do a certain thing 
whether the human family might take to 
it or not ; whether certain classes of men 
with us should rail at it or not. That 
law of the ten commandments is to be 
accounted as the common law of the 
world, and is so accounted by jurists — 
unless you are bold enough and strong 
enough to first pluck out the Sabbath. 

After Sinai, the Old Testament is rich 
in the Sabbath. Its sanctity, claims, prof- 
anation ; its persistent demands ; the 
diverse sanctions for protecting it, and 
the provisions for avenging it ; its wel- 
come phases and its pleasant things ; its 



28 THE LOBD'S DAY RESCUED, 

savor of holiness, and of heaven; these 
are all the while brought before your 
face. Such was its incommunicable value 
and such the majesty of Jehovah, the 
Lawgiver, that it was enacted at the 
outset, ^' Whosoever doeth any work on 
the Sabbath-day, he shall surely be put 
to death. " Before laying down his earthly 
charge, Moses repeats with other laws the 
laws of the Sabbath, and then quotes the 
words of God to his people: ''O, that there 
were such an heart in them that they 
would fear me, and keep my command- 
ments always, that it might be well with 
them and with their children forever. " 

The Sabbath was all the while a ''sign" 
and a ''covenant" between God and the 
people of his care. It was their badge 
of distinction and safety; of their elevation 
and prosperity. Things of good or things 
of evil hung, by natural effect and by 
God's hand direct, upon their keeping it, 



THE LOBB'S BAY BESCUEB. 29 

or not keeping it — a savor of life and death. 
What the Sabbath was in itself, and 
what it symbolized, made up the true life 
of the nation. Broken and trampled on, 
it stood for all manner of disaster, till 
their existence as a nation was blotted 
out ; blotted out because they did not 
keep it. Their prophets gave witness to 
the Sabbath. They lived in its magic 
circle. Nehemiah comes back from the 
long and hard Captivity — always so closely 
connected with Sabbath-breaking — at the 
head of a body of his countrymicn. He 
bravely builds the walls of Jerusalem, and 
creates a great reformation. But on his 
second return to Jerusalem, he was con- 
fronted with men of Judea bringing 
merchandise on the Sabbath-day, and by 
men of Tyre who dwelt there to traffic 
in ''fish and all manner of ware, and to 
sell on the Sabbath unto the children of 
Judea and in Jerusalem." He contended 



30 THE LORD'S BAY RESCUED. 

with the nobles of Judea about this. 
''Did not your fathers thus," he breaks 
out, ''and did not our God bring all this 
evil upon us, and upon this city ? Yet 
ye bring more wrath upon Israel by pro- 
faning the Sabbath." He now commands 
the gates of the city to be shut at 
nightfall before the Sabbath, and sets 
his servants to watch. " Once or twice " 
did merchants and sellers lodge without. 
Nehemiah dashes against them. "Why 
lodge ye about the wall ? If ye do so 
again, I will lay hands on you." They 
understood the righteous temper of the 
prophet, and " from that time forth came 
no more on the Sabbath." He commands 
the Levites to cleanse themselves, and 
" come and keep the gates to sanctify 
the Sabbath-day." Mark what Jeremiah 
says from God. " But if ye will not 
hearken unto me to hallow the Sabbath- 
day, and not to bear a burden, even 



THE LORD'S BAY liESCUED. 31 

entering in at the gates of Jerusalem on 
the Sabbath-day, then will I kindle a 
fire in the gates thereof, and it shall 
devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it 
shall not be quenched." And Isaiah sums 
up the whole matter. '* If thou turn 
away thy foot from the Sabbath, from 
doing thy pleasure on my holy day ; and 
call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of 
the Lord, honorable ; and shalt honor 
him, not doing thine own ways, nor find- 
ing thine own pleasure, nor speaking 
thine own words, then shalt thou delight 
thyself in the Lord, and I will cause thee 
to ride upon the high places of the 
earth, and feed thee with the heritage of 
Jacob thy father, for the mouth of the 
Lord hath spoken it.'* 



CHAPTER III. 

THE SABBATH AS KEPT BY CHRIST. 

IT is recorded by Luke, Chap, iv i6 : that 
Jesus ^^came to Nazareth, where he had 
been brought up : and as his custom was, 
he went into the synagogue on the Sab- 
bath-day, and stood up to read." 

The '^custom" of observing the Sab- 
bath by attending upon the synagogue 
must go back to his long residence in 
Nazareth. Would not Mary take the child 
Jesus with her to the synagogue ? He 
was ^^ subject" to his parents; would they 
not expect him to go with them on the 
Sabbath-day ? Nay ; would not the child 
Jesus, from innate character, very early 
lead the way of the family group to the 

32 



THE LORD'S DAY RESCUED. 33 

synagogue ? At the age of twelve, he 
taught the doctors in the. temple at Jeru- 
salem ; but what an aptitude he would 
have at that period for the Sabbath ser- 
vices at home. Had he not long before 
this begun to glow with visions as to 
being '^ about my Father's business"? 
Must not the son of Mary, the son of 
God, have entered into the meaning of 
synagogue and Sab jath as neither Joseph 
nor Mary could do ? His preaching in 
many synagogues, and his sudden fame 
throughout all Syria, were but the cul- 
mination of his' early '^custom" of observ- 
ing the Sabbath there in Nazareth. And 
did not Christ now by his public minis- 
try honor the Sabbath, and clearly regard 
it as his prime opportunity and help for 
preaching '! Does any minister of his in 
our times so fully regard the opportunity 
of the Lord's day .^ But Christ kept the 



34 THE LORD'S DAY RESCUED. 

Sabbath by setting it free from the hyp- 
ocritical and cruel clutch of the Pharisee. 
Strict observance — never so strict as at 
the time of Christ's coming — had grown 
into an iron imposition. The Scribes and 
Pharisees went all beyond the command- 
ment, and did what they pleased outside 
of it, and against it. Assuredly, they 
would find from their standpoint the new- 
comicr breaking the Sabbath. And with 
us easy-going infidel men assert, from 
their standpoint, that the Saviour did not 
place a high value on the day, or hold 
people to keeping it — a construing of his 
example that is as illogical as it is 
graceless. 

But turn to specimens of the maladminis- 
tration of the Sabbath in the hands of 
the Pharisees. As one of their manlier 
pieces of extravagance, the Jews would 
not sustain military operations on the 
Sabbath. A thousand of them fled before 



THE LORD'S BAY RESCUED. 35 

Antiochiis Epiphanes to the wilderness, 
but there allowed themselves to be cut 
to pieces because of the Sabbath-day. 
Pompey knew how to make use of this 
fanaticism by building his embankment on 
the seventh day, in the very face of the 
quiet defenders of Jerusalem. But manly 
things were not the main outcome of 
their caricature of the Sabbath command- 
ment. Jeremiah had instructed the Jews 
to ''bear no burden on the Sabbath-day," 
in traffic, through the city gates. But 
now the Pharisees had it, that a man 
must not walk through a stream on stilts, 
for that w^ould be to carrv the ''burden" 
of the stilts. A tailor must not go out 
with his needle on Friday^ lest he should 
forget about it and carry it the next day. 
A man must not carry a fan, for that 
would be to "bear a burden." The quantity 
of food that might be carried from one 
place to another must be less in bulk 



36 THE LORD'S BAY RESCUED, 

than a dried fig. A person buried under 
ruins might be dug for and taken out, 
if alive, but if dead, he was to be left 
until the Sabbath was over. It was not 
lawful for one person to carry a loaf on 
the public street, but two might carry it. 
You must not walk on the grass, for 
that would be a kind of threshing. The 
Essenes would not remove a dish on the 
Sabbath, for that would be bearing a bur- 
den. They would not remove their own 
bodies if caught away from home on Fri- 
day night when the sun went down, for 
had not Moses enjomed every man to 
''abide" in his place on the Sabbath-day, 
and not go out of his place .^ "And thus 
it was," says Canon Farrar, "that the 
observance of the Sabbath, which had be-en 
intended to secure for weary men a rest 
full of love and peace and mercy, had 
become a mere national fetich — a barren 
custom fenced in with the most frivolous 



THE LOBD'S DAY RESCUED. 37 

and senseless restrictions." And Geikie 
says, that '' as to the whole of social, indi- 
vidual, and public life, the Scribes carried 
the matter to the extreme of ridiculous 
caricature." 

Take, now, an illustration and a test as 
to Christ's way of dealing with the 
Sabbath. He is hastening away from 
Jerusalem because the Jews sought to 
kill him ; for he had broken their Sab- 
bath by making the impotent man whole 
at the pool of Bethesda. His disciples, 
hungry and straitened, pulled off the 
heads of wheat, or barley, and rubbed 
them in their hands as they went along 
the narrow path through the unfenced 
field. Spies and detectives had followed 
him. Here, now, was another case of 
Sabbath-breaking. They charge, " Be- 
hold, thy disciples do that which is not 
lawful to do upon the Sabbath-day," 
Christ makes answer by pointing them 



38 THE LOBB'S BAY RESCUEB. 

to the clear, strong case of David. He 
was an hungered, and they that were 
with him, and he entered into the house 
of God and did eat the show-bread w^hich 
could be '^lawfully" eaten only by the 
priests. David did this, moreover, upon 
the Sabbath, as is to be inferred from 
certain links in the chain, which makes 
the example, Alford remarks, *^ doubly ap- 
propriate." Christ also asks his persecutors 
if they had not read in the law how the 
priests in doing their work in the tem- 
ple on the Sabbath-days are held 
*' blameless." The disciples, then, had not 
violated the Sabbath by eating on their 
way. There was really nothing at stake; 
nothing to be considered. Christ and 
the Sabbath were not at variance here. 
His liberating it had not injured it. But 
he fortifies his position still further. He 
sends his accusers to their own Scrip- 
tures to find out the meaning of the 



THE LOBU'S DAY RESCUED. 39 

words, '' I will have mercy, and not 
sacrifice;" acts of piety, not formalities. 
He then asserts that '' the Sabbath was 
made for man, and not man for the 
Sabbath." He asserts as to the sanctity 
of the ^^ temple" which David dared to 
enter as he did, and priests must not 
profane — that a greater than the temple 
was now present with them. He rises to 
the sublime doctrine that '^the son of 
man is Lord of the Sabbath." He knew 
the day. He knew how to keep it. He 
had kept it. The Lord of the Sab- 
bath would not mar the Sabbath. Turn 
to a stronger illustration and a severer 
test of Christ's liberating and keeping the 
Sabbath in the same act, taken from 
the thirteenth chapter of Luke. It is 
the synagogue and the Sabbath-day. 
^^And behold, there was a woman which 
had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years ; 
and was bowed together, and could in no 



40 THE LOBJD'S DAY BESCUED, 

wise lift herself up." Jesus said to her, 
*' Woman, thou art loosed from thine in- 
firmity. And he laid his hands upon her ; 
and immediately she was made straight, 
and glorified God." But the ruler of the 
synagogue was full of indignation. He 
turned to the people and said, ^' There 
are six days in which men ought to 
work ; in them, therefore, come and be 
healed, and not on the Sabbath-day. " 
Christ's first word of reply was ''hypo- 
crite," or hypocrites, as is the Greek. 
He adds : '' Doth not each one of you on 
the Sabbath loose his ox or his ass from 
the stall and lead him away to watering.^ 
And ought not this woman, being a 
daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath 
bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed 
from this bond on the Sabbath-day.?" 
It is no wonder that ''all his adversaries 
were ashamed, and all the people rejoiced 
for all the glorious things that were 



THE LOBD'S DAY BESCVED, 41 

done by him." Says Farrar, ''The 
whole range of the Gospel does not sup- 
ply another instance of an interference 
so illogical, or a stupidity so helpless. 
' Hypocrite ! ' was the one crushing word 
with which Jesus addressed the ruler." 

Oh, yes ! Christ kept the Sabbath. We 
may feel that he kept it more really 
than any one else had ever done before 
him ; both because, as we look on, we 
get that impression, and because wx know 
that he excelled all others in whatever 
he did. He kept the Jewish Sabbath, 
but markedly, that hallowed, spiritual 
day which God set apart for the world 
before there was a Jew. Hereby he alike 
honors the institution and establishes it. 
No confirmation can equal this. He en- 
tered easily and heartily into the Sabbath 
as it was congenial with his own high 
nature, and because the Sabbath worked 
in the line of his own mission to earth. 



42 THE LORD'S BAY RESCUED, 

The spiritual kind of rest and repose, 
the real worship, the true service of God 
and man, the great interests of humanity 
and the world, are all found in Christ's 
way of observing the day. What view 
of the Sabbath, what reasoning, what 
one author, what sermonizer, what news- 
paper writer, what voluble man, can go 
behind Christ's record as to the character 
and the value of the Sabbath ? Who, 
who in our times can set the question 
right if our Lord has not done it ? Triflers 
need no longer try their hand at setting 
it right. 



CHAPTER IV. 



the sabbath transmuted into the 
lord's day. 



THE Chrstian world has the Lord's day. 
How came the Christian world to have 
it ? The Lord's day is here in the place 
of the old Sabbath ; how came the change ? 
The day has existed from the earliest 
times of the- Christian Church; for what 
reason^ and by what authority ? The new 
name and form are not taken on without 
cause. Its existence, indeed, an existence 
of such magnitude and moment, is a kind 
of proof that it is here by right ; but 
there must be a foundation for all this, 
w^hich we can find. The real proof in 
the case is not given in so many words. 



44 THE LORD'S BAY BESCUED, 

It is not direct and immediate. From 
the first, evidences glimmer along the line 
of the Gospel, flash out at points, gain 
volume down to the closing of the canon 
of the New Testament in the hand of 
John, but they are vastly strengthened 
by Church history in generations and cen- 
turies ensuing. The great and welcome 
truth is, that the new Sabbath, the Lord's 
day, is born of the genius of the Gospel. 
Of that genius as related to the old Sab- 
bath and the old dispensation, but more, 
as it is in itself, a genius of freedom, 
expansion, assimilation, adaptation, of spirit- 
ual life and power. It was strong enough 
to transmute one day of rest and worship 
into another day of rest and worship; 
to transfuse the worth of the first into 
the second ; to made a new, high reason 
for keeping such a day, and to breathe 
a new living spirit into it. The Lord's 
day is borne to us by a sacred, necessary 



THE LOBD'S DAY BESCUEl), 45 

irresistible drift ; by the sure inherent 
forces and purposes of the Gospel. The 
new religion must have a day of its own. 
The name speaks to us of a creation 
that counts the making a planet like ours 
an unimportant matter. Fealty to Christ 
yearns for a Lord's day, and this loving 
instinct was lovingly met at the outset. 
The behest of the Creator of the earth 
and of the Sabbath institution, was in it 
all. This is shown by the Providence 
that so early gave the Lord's day to 
the Church, and to human life, and by 
the providences that brought it along 
down the centuries, to the exclusion, at 
length, of the former Sabbath. With this 
view of the case, we are less anxious 
about the number of texts which seem 
to insure to us our day, or particular 
interpretations of them, or about the tes- 
timony of particular eras and records in 
ecclesiastical history. But we are now 



46 THE LOBD'S DAY BESCUED. 

to consult both Scripture and history. 

From the whole complexion of the case, 
may we not infer that the Saviour chose 
to leave the Lord's day under the apos- 
tles to rise out of his resurrection and 
ascension into heaven, instead of giving 
them positive instructions about it? They 
were '' endued with power from on high," 
and had even been told, ''whatsoever ye 
shall bind on earth shall be bound in 
heaven, and whatsoever ve shall loose on 
earth, shall be loosed in heaven." The 
Holy Spirit was to be to them more 
than Christ's own bodily presence. The 
Spirit would guide them into all truth, 
qualify them day by day for their work, 
direct them in the exercise of their au- 
thoritv, regulate in their hands the order, 
institutions, and worship of the Church. 
Would not a living Lord now be com- 
memorated by a living Lord's day } 
That day came, but how, except by 



THE LORD'S DAY BESCUED. 47 

the authority of the apostles, as these 
were related to their Lord? ''The first 
day of the week," for some reason, was 
lifted into sudden and permanent prom- 
inence. Christ's second meeting with his 
disciples ''after eight days," or on the 
evening of the Lord's day, strongly 
attracts our attention. And if subsequently 
the grand events of that baptized chris- 
tian Pentecost fell on the first day of 
the week, as there is ground for think- 
ing, then did the Lord's day secure a 
footing. Look further along, and away to 
Troas. Paul had come, and "abode there 
seven days. And upon the first day of 
the week, when the disciples came to- 
gether to break bread, Paul preached to 
them." The custom of a weekly break- 
ing of bread, and that upon the first day 
of the week, has not this the appear- 
ance of an established Lord's day ^ 
Olshausen comments : " The account of 



48 THE LORD'S BAY RESCUED, 

the meeting in Troas is interesting because 
it shows that the observance of Sunday 
existed as early as the times of the 
apostles. The most natural supposition is, 
that from the very commencement of the 
Church, believers distinguished the day of 
our Lord's resurrection, and celebrated it 
with solemn meetings." 

Pass to other forms of evidence. The 
church at Corinth, and the churches of 
Galatia, are directed by Paul to lay by 
in store their contributions upon ^' the 
first day of the week." 

Does not this speak of the new Sab- 
bath ? So Paul, in the epistle to the 
Hebrews, refers to the custom of ^' the 
assembling of ourselves together." Is not 
a particular day for public worship indi- 
cated by this ? But which day out of 
seven would that be ? John on the isle of 
Patmos, was *^in the spirit on the Lord's 
day." Mark the Scripture use, and so 



THE LORD'S DAY RESCULD. 49 

early, of that name — the Lord's clay. Pro- 
fessor Stuart thus comments : '' This first 
day was one of public worship among 
Christians in the apostolic age. The ap- 
pellation, Lord's day, occurs twice in the 
epistle of Ignatius, about a. d. ioi, who 
calls the Lord's day the queen and prince 
of all days. It was set apart and specially 
regarded by the primitive Christians. 
Later Fathers make a marked distinction 
between the Sabbath and the Lord's day, 
I have only to add, that such a day, 
commemorative of the resurrection of Christ 
from the dead, and set apart for holy 
spiritual exercises, was peculiarly appro- 
priate to the visions of God. The Saviour 
appears to John in his glory, as risen 
from the dead. The day and the vision 
both proclaim the fact of his resurrection." 
And does not our Lord here emphasize 
his own day by appearing to John on 
it.? 



50 THE LOBB'S DAY BESCUED. 

Rev. Lyman Coleman, D. D., says, 
"There is a fair presumption, if not a con- 
clusive inference, that the day was already 
known by this name because observed as 
the Sabbath of the Christian Church." 

There are certain passages in Paul's 
epistles which might seem to militate 
against the exclusive high place which we 
give to the Lord's day, but which in 
reality more than accord it. Take Colos- 
sians ii : i6, the strongest of the pas- 
sages referred to. " Let no man therefore 
judge you in meat, or in drink, or in 
respect of an holy day, or of the new- 
moon, or of the Sabbath-days; which are 
a shadow of things to come ; but the 
body is of Christ." The Sabbath-days 
here must be regarded as the sacred days 
of the Jews, which they tried to force 
upon the Gentile convert. Or, if it were 
the very Sabbath here, the Gentiles were 
to be peremptorily left to their own 



THE LOBD'S DAY BESCUED. 51 

Lord's day, a day, moreover, which Jew- 
ish converts observed to a greater or less 
extent, and often to the exclusion of their 
former Sabbath. Says Barnes : " The pro- 
priety of observing that day does not 
appear to have been a matter of contro- 
versy. The only inquiry was whether it 
was proper to add to that the observance 
of the Jewish Sabbaths, and days of fes- 
tivals and fasts." Professor Charles Hodge 
says: ''It is obvious that Paul has refer- 
ence to the Jewish festivals, and therefore 
his language cannot properly be applied 
to the Christian Sabbath." Doctor Cole- 
man says of a similar passage in Gala- 
tians : " The whole, in its connection, 
shows plainly that Paul had no reference 
to the religious observance of the Lord's 
day. His sole object was to guard the 
Galatians against a slavish subjection to 
the traditions of the Judaizing teachers. 
With the doctrine of the Lord's day 



52 THE LORD'S BAY RESCUED. 

under the gospel dispensation, the caution 
has no concern." Says Stuart: ^^ It has 
of course no application to the proper 
Lord's day." And so say we all. 

We are now prepared for passages from 
Church history. The Fathers use the 
phraseology, *' the eighth day," ''the first 
day of the week, " ^' the day of the 
sun," '^ the day of the Redeemer's rest," 
*'the Lord's day," all pointing in one 
direction. 

Pliny the younger speaks of Christians 
as accustomed '' to meet on a stated day, 
stato die, before it was light, for the wor- 
ship of Christ as God." What day of the 
week would that be, and what would be 
the name of it .? Forty years later, or in 
the first half of the second century, Jus- 
tin Martyr says, that '' on the day which 
is called Sunday, all Christians living 
either in the city or country, meet to- 
gether for religious worship." He gives 



THE LOBD'S BAY BESCUED. 53 

for reasons, that "it was on the first day, 
God, changing the darkness and chaos, 
created the world, and Jesus Christ, our 
Saviour, rose from the dead." 

TertuUian, at the close of the second 
century, says: *^We celebrate Sunday as 
a joyful day. On the Lord's day, we 
think it wrong to fast, or to kneel in 
prayer." The epistle of Barnabas has 
this : ** We observe the eighth day with 
gladness, in which Jesus rose from the 
dead, and, after his manifestation, ascended 
up into heaven." Leo the Great, in the 
fifth century, gives this reason for the 
change from the seventh day to the first : 
" On this day the world had its origin. 
On the same day, through the resurrec- 
tion of Christ, death came to an end, and 
life begun." Jerome explained '^the first 
day of the week," by the words, ^' The 
Lord's day." Athanasius said : " The Lord 
has transferred the Sabbath to the Lord's 



54 THE LORD'S BAY BESCUED. 

day." There can be no doubt that the 
Fathers of the first three centuries be- 
lieved that the Jewish Sabbath had been 
displaced by the Lord's day, on divine 
authority. 

In the early part of the fourth century, 
.Constantine made decrees in favor of the 
Lord's day, though as a shrewd politician, 
he was careful not to offend the heathen 
portion of his subjects. He required his 
armies to maintain devotional exercises on 
that day ; courts of judicature were not 
to be held ; suits and trials were not to 
be prosecuted, though the emancipation of 
slaves could be declared lawful. Other 
rulers, both in the West and East, adopted 
the same line, and went beyond Constan- 
tine. All public shows, theatrical exhibi- 
tions, dancing and amusements were strictly 
prohibited. 

The Council of Laodicea subsequently 
enacted that Christians ought not to act 



THE LOBD'S BAY BESCUED. 55 

as Jews, and rest from labor on the Sab- 
bath, but on the Lord's day. In the ninth 
century, Charlemagne called five councils 
to remedy the disregard of the Lord's 
day, with the correction of other evils in 
the Church. And from the fourth to the 
fifteenth centuries inclusive, there must 
have been more than seventy councils and 
synods that recognized the ordinance of 
the holy day, and often adopted some 
canon in its behalf; for all along, then 
as now, the day had trouble, and friends, 
then as now, always rallied to rescue it. 
The providences of God that led the new 
day onward seem slow to impatient man, 
or to the zealous believer in the Lord's 
day, and much mixed and entangled, for 
it was not till the fifth century that it 
secured its place in the Church and 
among the peoples to the exclusion of the 
Jewish Sabbath. At the outset, the apos- 
tles kept a kindly leaning to whatever 



56 THE LORD'S BAY RESCUED. 

was true and right in ** the Jews' rehgion/' 
their Sabbath intent and aim, especially 
included ; but in this way, under Provi- 
dence, the new day took on the more a 
fitting solemnity and a healthful sanctity, 
the two days being observed side by side 
for so long a time. 

But the Fathers, both the earlier 
and the later, signally failed in this : 
that they did not maintain the insti- 
tution of the Lord's day as an insti- 
tutiojiy and thus lift up the day into its 
own native purity, and exalt its exclusive 
claims. They were intent, rather, on de- 
nouncing ^^ false Sabbaths," as Athanasius 
called them, and the impositions of Judaiz- 
ing teachers, and the mingling of pagan 
superstitions with the solemnities of the 
real day. TertuUian, a friend of *'a joy- 
ful" day, was free and bold enough to 
say that to '^Christians all days were holy," 
without staying to insist that Providence 



THE LORD'S DAY RESCUED. 57 

had given the world the Lord's day to 
be ''holy," all by itself, after its own make 
and pattern. In like manner, the men 
of the Reformation, alive to the corrup- 
tions and tyrannies of the Roman Catholic 
Church, and its imposition of multiplied 
holy days, sadly and irretrievably failed to 
reform the Lord's day. The mighty 
Luther w^as not all equal to his times. 

The late Rev. Dr. Coleman, LL.D. — 
living, a personal friend, when I first quoted 
him — who wTote so ably on the Sabbath in 
the BibliotJieca Sacra, presents us this 
sentiment : '' The Puritans, those stern 
defenders of the faith once delivered to 
the saints, to whom England is so deeply 
indebted for her religious liberties, and 
from whom we have received the price- 
less inheritance of our civil and religious 
privileges, these have the immortal honor 
of first giving to the Christian world the 
Sabbath. They first asserted the divine 



58 THE LOBD'S DAY RESCUED. 

authority of the day by a clear exposition 
of the law of God respecting it. This 
fact ought to be better known, and pressed 
upon the notice of the public. It de- 
serves to be held in grateful and ever- 
lasting remembrance in honor of those 
noble men/' 



CHAPTER V. 

THE lord's day IS TO BE PREEMINENTLY 

PRIZED. 

HOW attractive, serene, sublime, is our 
conception of a true Lord's day! 
The whole community, the State, the na- 
tion, at rest ! Ceased the battle of traffic, 
the clangor of labor, the rattle and screech 
of the railroad train, the plowing and puf- 
fing of steamers, the rumbling of heavy 
v^heels, the furor of the light vehicle, the 
crowding of the crowd, the bold, bad shows 
of the theatre, the '^indecent" dance, as 
Bishop Paddock justly calls it, of the ball- 
room, the din of midnight saloons, all rev- 
eUng and carousing ; all places of busi- 
ness closed, the city fully hushed and com- 

59 



60 THE LOBD'S DAY BESCUEB. 

posed, the rural districts as quiet as their 
own June landscape. The mind released 
from its turmoil, is pleasantly quickened 
in its new reaches of thought ; heart and 
soul '' shine in the light of God." Chil- 
dren and parents flock to the study of the 
Scriptures, multitudes to the preaching of 
the gospel — that preaching itself the daugh- 
ter of the day — social affections are both 
cherished and chastened. The Bible and 
books in tone with it are read, activities 
are put forth in deeds of Christian love. 
The institution by God in Eden is fully 
regarded and gratefully felt to be made 
for man, and the smile of the Saviour of 
the world is resting upon the tribute and 
the offering of the children of men, from 
the beginning to the end. 

But rich as it is in itself, the Lord's 
day is largely the maker of the wealth 
and worth of all the other days. It takes 
the highest care of man at rest for one 



THE LOIW'S BAY BESCUEB. 61 

day, but this is, that he may labor holily 
the other six days. Supremely freighted 
and fruited for its own especial ends, it 
would the more throw itself into all the 
interests of our life. Let us take up cer- 
tain specifications. 

The Lord's day is a necessity for rest 
of the body. How is that rest de- 
manded by the day-laborer 1 How, in the 
case of the one, so often met, — 

whose sore task 



Does not divide the Sunday from the week ? 

By that single touch, Shakespeare has 
shown that in his time there was mean- 
ing and worth in the Lord's day. Instru- 
ments of steel are restored by rest. Shall 
not human sinews be thus restored ? 
Sleep must be had at regular intervals, 
but rest on one day in seven works to the 
same end. Medical authorities insist on 
the necessity of this kind of medicine. 



62 THE LOBB'S DAY BESCUED. 

They have done it in this country, but 
in England the more. Dr. Farre says : 
^^ Although the night apparently equalizes 
the circulation, yet it does not sufficiently 
restore its balance for the attainment of 
a long life ; hence one day in seven, by 
the bounty of Providence, is thrown in as 
a day of compensation to perfect by its 
repose the animal system. I have fre- 
quently observed the premature death of 
medical men from continued exertion. I 
have advised the clergyman, in lieu of his 
Sabbath, to rest one day in the week; it 
forms a continual prescription of mine. I 
have seen many destroyed by their duties 
on that day." Dr. Mussey of our own land, 
held : *' Under the due observance of the 
Sabbath, life would on the average be pro- 
longed more than one seventh of its whole 
period ; that is, more than seven years 
in fifty." 

Six hundred and forty-one medical 



THE LORD'S BAY RESCUED, 63 

men of London subscribed a petition 
to Parliament against the opening of the 
Crystal Palace on Sundays. They say : 
**Your petitioners, from their acquaintance 
with the laboring classes and with the 
laws which regulate the human economy, 
are convinced that a seventh day of rest, 
instituted by God, and coeval with the 
existence of man, is essential to the bodily 
health and mental vigor of men in every 
station of life." A position somewhat dif- 
ferent from that of certain city authorities 
in our own country, who think that they 
must furnish amusement for the laboring 
classes on the Lord's day. London papers 
doubted at one time as to the physical abil- 
ity of Sir Robert Peel to keep on in the 
office of Prime Minister. The Standard 
replied: '^ Sir Robert does not work seven 
days in a week — full assurance that his 
work will not impair his health. Every 
Sunday finds him on his knees at public 



64 THE LOED'S DAY RESCUED. 

worship^ with his family about him. We 
never knew a man to work seven days in 
the week who did not kill himself, or kill 
his mind. We believe that the dull Eng- 
lish Sunday, as it is stigmatized by frib- 
bles and by fools, is the principal cause 
of the superior health and longevity of the 
English people." 

Very noted testimony as to the worth 
of the Lord's day was that furnished 
through a select committee of the House 
of Commons in the year 1832. The com- 
mittee was composed of thirty persons : 
such men as Sir Robert Peel, Fowell Bux- 
ton, Lord Ashley, Sir Thomas Barring. 
They had power to send for persons, papers, 
and records. Ninety men of different oc- 
cupations and positions in society were 
called before the committee, and seven- 
teen days were given to the investigation. 
Look at their testimony. 

Rev. J. W. Cunningham, vicar of Har- 



THE LOBD'S BAT BESCUEB. 65 

row, testified as to a public institution 
which employed more than two thousand 
laborers. " The quantity of work done by 
the same men under the system of employ- 
ino: them six days of the week was rather 
more than the labor done on the system of 
employing them the seven days." Demor- 
alization was greater under the seven days 
system. Mr. Peter M'Ewen, a master 
baker, testifies : '' Ours is a very labori- 
ous trade, and especially requires a day 
of rest. This practice of excessive labor 
is attended with injurious effects to the 
persons employed. I have no doubt that 
one day of rest in the week would obviate 
those injurious effects in a very consid- 
erable degree." Mr. Rowland, fishmonger : 
'' The men whom I employ seem to prize 
the privilege of a day of rest. Compared 
with others who have not that privilege, 
I should say that they are more respecta- 
ble members of society ; their wives and 



66 THE LORD'S DAY RESCUED, 

families are benefitted by it." Mr. Thomas 
George testified: " I have attended to this 
subject of the better observance of the Sab- 
bath about tvv^o years. Tvv^enty-four trades 
have been canvassed by myself and others. 
The vast majority said they 'had a right 
to enjoy the day v^ithout reference to what 
use they might make of it.' A great 
many said that they should employ it in 
going to a place of v^orship." Mr. Pan- 
ther, clerk, said of canal men: ^'Even 
v^hile in the degraded state I have described, 
and working on Sunday, they have invaria- 
bly expressed a wish for the Sunday as 
a day of rest." While this investigation 
was going on, seven thousand journeymen 
bakers in London and vicinity petitioned 
Parliament to secure to them the Sunday 
as a day of rest, they so suffered in 
health from their continuous toil, Look 
at illustrations as you easily call them up 
in our own country. Hear the complaints 



THE LORD'S DAY RESCUED. 67 

of men, in diverse occupations, for lack of 
Sunday. 

The Lord's day is the fittest provisioji 
for rest of tJie mind. In giving such posi- 
tive releases, in its peculiar kind of quietude, 
its church services, so apart from ordi- 
nary occupation, in its kind of duties 
and opportunities, its whisperings to con- 
science, its subjects of thought and its 
sacred associations ; in its upliftling of 
the man to God and Heaven, and in car- 
rying him forward to eternity ; in its own 
nature and force, the Lord's day more 
thoroughly and kindly arrests the week 
day workings of the mind than any other 
possible device. Not sleep on that day, 
not reading of novels, not social visiting, 
not riding nor boating, nor lounging, nor 
reverie in the wood, nor the sociability 
of home, or club-room ; no turn, no shift, 
has such restorative power, such minister- 
ing "to a mind diseased." The change 



68 THE LORD'S BAY RESCUED, 

comes of a certainty, but it is most 
happily augmented and enriched at one's 
choice. How beautifully does the day 
interpose between the merchant and his 
ledger, the lawyer and his brief, the 
laborer and his tools, the scholar and 
his books ; between men and their exhaust- 
ing pleasures, anxieties, ambitions, strifes, 
vexations, the whole tribe of corrodings of 
the mind. Isaac Taylor said : *' I am pre- 
pared to affirm that it is the best of all 
means of refreshment to the mere intel- 
lect." Coleridge said : '' I feel as if God 
had, by giving the Sabbath, given fifty- 
two springs in the year." And our own 
Longfellow said : '^ Sunday is the golden 
clasp that binds the volume of the week/' 
May I venture upon an illustration, 
half reality, half supposition? It is found 
in the case of Rufus Choate. I held 
seats in the Essex Street Church, Boston, 
a little in the rear of the pew occupied 



THE LOBD'S DAY RESCUED. 69 

by the great barrister. Of all men, Rufiis 
Choate was the least likely to escape 
from himself; to stop thinking his own 
thoughts. Before services began, he ner- 
vously ran his hands through his hair, to 
drain off his brain. But no man in the 
congregation gave to the preacher a look 
so earnest, penetrating, persistent. If he 
sought very help to escape from himself, 
he could find it in that occupation, and 
in the particular preacher, whom he hon- 
ored and loved — the Rev. Doctor Nehe- 
miah Adams — a mind in its structure so 
different from his own, and in its office 
so calm, devout, rich ; so gracefully im- 
pressive. Mr. Choate appeared consciously 
to find the preaching a medicine of relief 
and refreshment for the lawyer mind, and 
a new form of vigor. Certain I am that 
the Essex Street Church was all that to 
him in his professional ambition, whether 
he consciously sought it or not. By this, no 



70 THE LORD'S BAY BESCUED. 

distrust is thrown over Mr, Choate's relig- 
ious experience, as it becomes fit here 
to show. He had had years before this 
period, the deepest kind of exercises of 
mind, as related to me by his former 
pastor, the Rev. William Williams, of the 
Crombie Street Church, Salem, Mass., my 
immediate predecessor there. 

A great awakening, in 1830, a year of 
awakenings, had taken hold of Salem. 
Mr. Choate had become an earnest inquirer. 
His pastor was at Mr. Choate's house. In 
the midst of a close, rapid conversation, 
the door-bell rang. ^' I can see nobody," 
said Mr. Choate, in painful conflict with 
himself Mr. Williams went to the door, 
and the gentlemen were led to retire. 
As the conversation went on, the bell 
rings again. '* Tell them from me that I 
camiot see them.'' Much hesitating, they 
were again constrained to retire. Pastor 
and inquirer were now yet more in ear- 



THE LORD'S BAY RESCUED. 71 

nest. But the bell rings louder, and the 
gentlemen say : *^ We micst see him ; let 
him just come to the door." Mr. Choate 
went, and came back with the old pain 
on his face, to say, "/ imcst go.'" As 
it afterwards appeared, these gentlemen 
were members of the Vigilance Commit- 
tee in the case of the Captain White 
murder, and had then obtained the first 
clue to it after six weeks of the public 
terror, and Mr. Choate their counsel 
must needs go. But that close dealing 
of the Holy Spirit with him seemed 
never to have lost its hold upon him. 
And it is very grateful to add, that a 
gospel minister of such carefulness as Dr. 
Adams had, and of such strictness in doc- 
trine, could say in public address, that 
** Heaven would lack something in attrac- 
tion for him if he felt that he should not 
find Rufus Choate there." 

The Lord's day builds up a people in 



72 THE LOBB'S BAT RESCUED. 

good morals. A true New England boy 
wakes to the morning of the Lord's day 
as to a pecuUar sort of sunshine. It falls 
on his conscience^ and on his sentiment 
of sacredness. God is in the sunshine, 
as the boy had not felt him to be in 
that of any one of the six days previous. 
He cannot explain it, but he feels 
it out. He does not exactly like the 
change, but he does not venture to 
undo the impression. He knows it 
all to be good for him, and that it 
is preeminently God's right and claim. 
The members of the family look the 
difference of the day. The air of inter- 
course and social life through all the 
hours, tells of it. Happier that the boy 
should rise to that kind of bright sun 
than as an heir expectant, in a Sabbath- 
less country of Europe, he should wake 
to the coming of a throne. Consider the 
forces and appliances of the Lord's day 



THE LOBD'S DAY RESCUED. 73 

for lifting up a people from bad sen- 
timents and vicious indulgences. There 
is the bodily rest, both an antidote and 
a cure ; there is the arresting of common 
courses of thought, and turning them into 
healthy channels ; there is the pervad- 
ing atmosphere of a peculiar day — a 
power all by itself ; there is that public 
Sunday-school, for youngest and oldest, 
with its own peculiar text-book ; there is 
the pulpit, with its lessons of integrity, 
honesty, truthfulness, purity, godliness, 
and whence come both the '' thunders " of 
violated law, and the gospel whispers of 
'^ peace." There are all the affiliated helps 
of the house of worship ; there are the 
week-day evening meetings which grow 
out of the services of the one day in 
seven ; there are the living examples of 
morality and religion which are begotten 
and nourished by that day ; there, the 
right word, fitly spoken, as to God and 



74 THE LORD'S DAY BESCUED, 

heaven, which otherwise never would have 
been spoken ; there, resulting influences, 
of many a precious name, which flow out 
upon the family and upon the public. 

Take, now, certain ilkistrations of the 
point which are drawn from the failure to 
keep the Lord's day, and as presented in 
the report of the Committee of the House 
of Commons. The report may be said to 
show, in the words of one of their wit- 
nesses, that '' in each trade, in proportion 
'to its disregard of the Sabbath, is the 
immorality of those engaged in it." Mr. 
James Panther, a clerk in the house of 
John Whitehouse and Sons, canal carriers, 
testified : ''The men employed have been 
in the habit of working on Sundays from 
their youth. They say, 'What is the use 
of leaving off sin ? We are obUged to 
break one commandment, and if we break 
one, we will break the whole.' I do not 
know that there is any class of men in 



THE LOIWS DAY RESCUED, 75 

this country so bad." That firm gave up 
using the Lord's day in their business, 
for they found that their men " had become 
entirely demorahzed, and could not be 
trusted with anything." The Hon. and 
Rev. Gerard T. Noel said : '' I am curate 
of Richmond. The influence produced 
upon the moral habits of the place from 
the influx of strangers, on the Sabbath, 
is extremely injurious. They make it 
completely like a fair-day, and, I am sorry 
to say, this evil is increasing," Robert 
J. Chambers, Esq., magistrate: "I had 
ninety-six charges of drunkenness brought 
before me one Monday morning. I am 
certain the best means of checking such 
wholesale immorality would be to discour- 
age the facilities now given to drunken- 
ness on the Lord's day, and on Saturday 
night." Mr. Alexander Hill, baker: ''The 
young men come from the country with 
a desire to observe the Sabbath ; nothing 



76 THE LORD'S DAY RESCUED, 

is better calculated to sear the mind 
than the profanation of the Sabbath ; so 
that whatever morals were instilled into 
their minds, or desire to attend to the 
duties of the Sabbath-day, they are soon 
obliterated." Rev. Mr. Ruell, chaplain of 
a prison, stated: ^^I do not recollect a 
single case of capital offence where the 
party was not a Sabbath-breaker, and in 
many cases they have assured me that 
Sabbath-breaking was the first step in the 
course of crime ; and in some cases, they 
have requested me to warn others against 
it, from, their example." Mr. Sweetland, 
baker : '' I have heard the evidence of 
the last five witnesses. I most assuredly 
agree in the opinion that the working on 
Sunday has a demoralizing effect upon 
the men. My men have expressed the 
wish that they should have the Sabbath- 
day for a day of rest." Alexander Gor- 
don, Esq. : *' I am a solicitor, in extensive 



THE LORD'S BAY BESCZTED, 77 

practice. I have given much attention to 
the state of the law with regard to the 
Sabbath day. A great number of persons 
and their families follow their occupations 
on a Sunday. I think there is not the 
LEAST doubt it is injurious to morals 
that that should continue." 

In our own country, take one form of 
Sunday work, that on our canals, as they 
were, at least, some years ago, and as 
connected with the most wretched demor- 
alization of both men and women. The 
Erie Canal, at one time, had an especially 
bad preeminence. Certain statements 
about it at that time made one shudder, 
and may not be put in print again here. 
A mild statement in comparison, by the 
Journal of Conniierce^ in 1842, as to the 
New York canals, is nothing less than 
this: ''Thousands of men and boys have 
become vicious and debased beyond almost 
any other portion of our population, and 



78 THE LORB'S DAY BESCUED. 

they have imparted their own characters 
to the contamination and ruin of other 
thousands. They commit great depreda- 
tions on the goods they carry. They 
furnish one half of the prisoners at Au- 
burn. This would never have been the 
case if the Sabbath had been observed on 
the canals." Verily, we did not need all 
this to make good what Blackstone has 
averred: ^^ A corruption of morals usually 
follows a profanation of the Sabbath." Or 
what William Wilberforce witnesses in a 
stronger way : '* I don't say it lightly ; 
I believe the contempt into which the 
Sabbath has fallen bids fair to accelerate 
the ruin both of Church and State more 
than any other single circumstance what- 
ever." 

The Lord's day eminently promotes t/ie 
intellectual iinprovement of a nation. By 
its rest and change, it gives vigor and a 
healthy tone to the mind for any subject 



THE LOBD'S DAY RESCUED. 79 

whatever. It supplies new thought, and 
on the highest themes. It is itself an 
educator. It is such to the learned, and 
to those whose occupations are more dis- 
tinctly mental, and certainly to the great 
body of people who subsist by the labor 
of their hands, have few books, and lim- 
ited time for reading. But the Lord's 
day has a pulpit, a central, unique edu- 
cator. In our earlier history the preacher 
was a chief teacher. His books, in his 
handling of them, became a circulating 
library. They served for hearers who 
could not afford to buy books, and when 
books could not be had. Besides, his 
style of reading the library was more to 
the community than his library would have 
been if multiplied sufficiently to give a du- 
plicate to every family in it. His studies 
were fruitful and rich to all beyond what 
most of the select few could have made 
out of his books for themselves. Look 



80 THE LOBD'S BAY BESCUFD. 

later at Jonathan Edwards, whether 
among the Indians, or with the thinking, 
self-reliant people of Northampton. How 
did his master intellect arouse and feed 
the best intellects of that town. Look 
more recently at Emmons ; him who said 
to his anxious workmen on his farm when 
they ventured to his study in an exigency: 
'' Then /rt the hay get icu't. I am not 
going to leave my work to do yours." 
The presence of such men in a commu- 
nity is a mind-quickener. To-day the 
preacher in the wild West, among wilder 
men, is a notable force there for the in- 
tellect and for intelligence. Those men 
of the mines have sharpened wits, but 
the man of the Lord's day carries to 
them what they most need to learn, what 
would so inspire them, and also more 
than they know of many a subject which 
they do understand. 

Li any town or city. West or East, the 



rilE LORD'S DAY RESCUED. 81 

pulpit of the Lord's day, well-filled, the 
living voice and a live man, keeps abreast, 
and leads. To keep abreast in its espe- 
cial Hne is to lead — to teach teachers. 
But its specialty takes along with it some 
of the best kinds and forms of collateral 
education through the use of illustrations 
and references, citations of facts in science, 
philosophy, history. Stirred by the pulpit, 
men and newspapers pursue further 
the subjects of discourse, lay hold of dis- 
cussion, summon books to their aid, go 
on to other topics. Then there is the 
school of the Lord's day, a very school 
for all who are willing to be scholars, 
and for as long a term of years as they 
are willino- to study. General attainment 
and cultivation will be quite as sure a 
result in that school as the particular end 
for which it is established. 

The Lord's day confers douicstic benefits 
of the highest kind. Contemplate the 



82 THE LORD'S BAY RESCUED, 

picture given us by Burns of the Satur- 
day night in Scotland, the beginning 
there of the Lord's day. It is significant 
that it should be painted by Burns, and 
not by the pious Cowper : 

The cheerful supper done, wi' serious face 

They round the ingle form a circle wide ; 
The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace. 

The big ha' Bible, ance his father's pride. 
They chant their artless notes in simple guise ; 

They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim: 
Perhaps Ditndee's wild warbling measures rise, 

Or plaintive Miwtyrs^ worthy of the name. 

Then kneeling down, to Heaven's eternal King, 

The saint, the father, and the husband prays : 
Hope " springs exulting on triumiphant wing," 

That thus they all shall meet in future days: 
There ever bask in uncreated rays. 

No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear, 
Together hymning their Creator's praise, 

In such society, yet still more dear ; [sphere. 

Where circling time moves round in an eternal 

Contrast this picture with the image you 



THE LORD'S BAY RESCUED. 83 

have of families in Spain, under their 
monstrously corrupted religion. Their 
great day for the theatre, but most for 
the bull -fight, is the Lord's day. 

Hark ! heard ye not the forest monarch's roar ? 
* * ^ * * * * 

Yells the mad crowd o'er entrails freshly torn, 
Nor shrinks the female eye, nor e'en affects to mourn. 

No religion but that of the Lord Jesus 
Christ insures the true family, and his 
own Lord's day works eminently to the 
same end. Both as cause and effect, where 
that day has the strongest hold there the 
family is at the best, whether in Protes- 
tant countries as compared with Catholic, 
or in Protestant countries as compared 
with each other. Paganism, under every 
form, of old and to-day, knows not fidel- 
ity, purity, female rights, delicate proprie- 
ties, in its family. Illustrious Rome, or 
Greece, half-gloried in her shame. Mo- 



84 THE LOBD'SJDAY BESCUEB. 

hammedanism gives up the true home on 
earth, and dares to lure followers by the 
promise of a sensual heaven. Its holy Friday 
in the place of the Lord's day does nothing 
to release its households from that car of 
death. The cliildren, as the mothers are 
robbed of their rights and their dues, 
while yet the father makes himself the 
greatest victim of them all. 

The Lord's day brings wealth to a 
nation. Rest of body and of mind one day 
in seven, good morals, and force of in- 
tellect, all of which we have considered, 
look toward wealth. But the Lord's day 
utilizes the common love of gain in its 
own good way under appliances of still 
o^her names. These are well-directed labor 
of the six days, industry, frugality, con- 
science, enterprise, forecast, health, long 
life, endurance, persistency in well-doing. 
These plow field and prairie, sail ships 
and steamers, build railroads, dig canals, 



THE LOBD'S DAY BESCUED. 85 

open rivers and harbors, create the play 
of factories, make long interchanges of 
goods, rear flocks and herds, gather cot- 
ton and wheat, open the mine, turn for- 
ests into timber, build cities, change dead 
plains into gardens. And they would save 
us from the fearful waste of money and 
domestic goods to which Americans so 
easily get accustomed, and from godless 
prodigalities and indulgences of the rich. 
That saving alone^ in city and country, 
throughout this broad land, would be an 

immeasurable accumulation. Lady , 

of England, whom I met at the table 
clear away in Jerusalem, lifted up both of 
her hands, literally, in horror, at the '' waste 
of food'' in America, as she had herself 
witnessed it. In England, as w^e know, 
the rich and titled have fine ways of econ- 
omy as to their surplus food, giving it 
to their retainers, and the poor. 

General Garfield said a manly word in 



86 THE LOIWS BAT BUSCLEJ). 

a campaign speech in Faneuil HalL '' When, 
after the war. wc should have saved a dol- 
lar, we spent it." He thus brought our 
extravagance and the existing *' hard times" 
face to face ; and the opponents of the 
Administration lace to face with results 
which no possible administration of the 
government could avert. An overtaxed 
Providence nuist inrlict the penalty of 
hard times. 

The Lord's day would secure civii a»d 
foiitical prosperity. The President of this 
great country needs the Lord*s daw He 
needs its releases, its rest, its quietude, 
its mental refreshment, its moral quicken- 
ing, its spiritual life. Secretaries of de- 
partments need it in the same ways. 
Public officers by thousands need it. 
Congressmen need it. The nation's Cap- 
ital needs it. The judges of the Supreme 
Court need it. and all the judges in the 
land. Governors need it. ^Members of 



THE LORD'S BAY RESCUED, 87 

State legislatures need it. Mayors, magis- 
trates, policemen, need it. Lawyers need 
it. What private citizen and voter is there 
who does not need it "! A realized Lord's 
day would tone up the sentiment of jus- 
tice, which toning up is so much demanded 
by the times, and make strong the arm 
of righteous authority. It would not less 
naturally temper government to the rights 
and claims of every class and condition 
of people. It would lend help to the estab- 
lishment of a civil service system, so be- 
praised, but really loved and sought by 
only a royal few. It would impart a 
better love of country, and largely con- 
tribute to the cure of selfishness and par- 
tisanship, and such corruption in our 
politics. It would make safer, truer, more 
friendly, all our relations with other gov- 
ernments and peoples. 

The Lord's day is the coadjutor of the 
preacher of the Gospel. We forget that 



88 THE LORD'S BAY RESCUED. 

our stated preaching is a daughter of the 
Lord's day. At the first, Christ availed 
himself of the Sabbath and the synagogue 
to give to the world his Gospel. But how 
could we now live on without that stated 
preaching ? Where would be the hope of 
the conversion of men to God ? Where 
their subsequent building up ? Whence 
would rise Christ's churches ? The very 
same preaching would have less power if 
it were not sure of the help and sympa- 
thy of the day. That is a saving pres- 
ence round about the word preached. It 
is the "savor of life unto life," both to the 
preacher and the hearer. The Holy Spirit, 
without whom we are all as dead men, and 
all things are dead, loves the day, and 
makes it honorable. As a great fact, 
through all the Christian world, preaching 
is a power in proportion as communities 
and country pay homage to the Lord's 
day. Flippant, half-infidel men with us 



THE LOBB'S DAY RESCUED. 89 

make bad work in the pulpit, very bad, 
but scrupulous Romish priests abroad in 
their Sabbathless lands are very likely to 
be as weak preachers as the first are wicked. 
Such, such are phases of the high prize 
we have in the Lord's day. Would that 
the people of this country could feel the 
power of this provision of God for them 
somewhat as they felt together the power 
of his providence in those last eighty 
days in President Garfield's life ! George 
Herbert has finely painted the Lord's day: 

Sundays the pillars are 
On which heaven's palace arched lies ; 
The other days fill up the space, 
And hollow room, with vanities ; 
They are the fruitful beds and borders 
In God's rich garden ; that is bare 
Which parts their ranks and orders. 

The Sundays of men's life, 
Threaded t02:ether on life's string. 
Make bracelets to adorn the wife 
Of the eternal, glorious King. 
On Sundays heaven's gate stands ope ; 
Blessings are plentiful and rife, 
More plentiful than hope. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE lord's day MUST BE IMMEDIATELY 
RESCUED. 

HOW has the Lord's day fallen in the 
street ! How ought the friends of 
Christ in this country to '' remember from 
whence it has fallen!" When we con- 
sider what an institution the Lord's day 
is, direct from God, vital to man ; what 
it has done for this nation — the nation 
could not have been made without it — 
and what it must yet do for us; what 
has hitherto been our sentiment and our 
practice in respect to it ; and then turn 
to look at it as it is at this hour, you 
may well doubt whether Church history 
has on record as grave a disaster for the 

90 



TRE LORD'S DAY RESCUED. 91 

same space of time. Fast-going, worldly 
people understand it if God's people 
do not. And the multitude will keep on 
just as far as a righteous sentiment in 
the community, and the stand taken by 
the church of Christ at large will let 
them. The chapter as to the facts in the 
case, the forms and shapes of the crime 
against Heaven, the reader writes for him- 
self. I am saved from it. The Rev. E. 
S. Atwood, in one of the '' Sabbath Essays,'' 
shows the ^'initial" and the "terminal" 
state of the case. 

''In 1620, a company of Pilgrims, after 
a wearisome voyage, making an explora- 
tion for a place to land, are driven by 
stress of weather to an unknown island, 
and finding themselves unable to regain 
the ship before the Sabbath, spend the 
Lord's day unsheltered in the bleak win- 
ter air, rather than seem to trespass on 
holy time. In this year of grace, great 



92 THE LORD'S BAY RESCUED, 

excursion steamers plow through the same 
waters on the Sabbath loaded with pleas- 
ure-seekers, and the shores of Clark's 
Island echo back the sound of careless 
laughter and the crash of bands." But 
if people can do this down there by 
Plymouth Rock, what may they not do 
elsewhere ! Forty years ago the Rev. Dr. 
Burns came to this country as one of 
three commissioners from the Free Church 
of Scotland. He was wont to speak of 
us in public address as distinguished, in 
his immediate and unexpected observa- 
tion, ^' by the keeping of the Sabbath/' I 
knew we had a Sabbath, supposed that they 
had a like one in Scotland, and was a 
little jealous to have him say something 
further in favor of New England and of 
my country ; but no, our badge was for 
the time being with him, ^'the keeping of 
the Sabbath." What would Dr. Burns say 
now as to our practice were he commis- 



THE LOBD\S DAY BESCUEB. 93 

sioned to come down to this land from 
Heaven ! 

Take an illustration as given at the 
time by the Congregationalist : ^^ It may 
be that Boston is already so far a 'for- 
eign' city that the wholesale proceedings 
by which the Sabbath was broken in con- 
nection with the return of a regiment from 
Yorktovvn three days ago, are beyond cor- 
rection or redress ; but it would seem 
that those who love the quiet, not to say 
the sanctity, of that day, may at least 
claim the liberty to put on record their 
protest, and the expression of their sorrow 
and shame. The Ninth Massachusetts, 
which is, if we mistake not, wholly Irish, 
reached Boston early in the evening, after 
having occasioned confusion here for hours 
beforehand by the gathering of seven com- 
panies of the First Regiment who were 
to ' escort ' them after their arrival. A 
great deal of delay and display took place. 



94 THE LOBWS BAY BESCUED. 

after which, surrounded by surging and 
shouting crowds, they marched to Faneuil 
Hall, where the city gave them a colla- 
tion, and after the due amount of drink- 
ing, singing, and miscellaneous confusion, 
all dispersed to their homes. We regard 
the whole transaction as a disgrace to the 
city, and an insult to its Christian citi- 
zens of all creeds. It is no secret that 
the regiment about whom all this fuss was 
made brought no credit to Massachusetts 
during their excursion, and such wholesale 
desecration of the Lord's day on their 
return deserves the severest condemnation." 
Subsequent investigation by the proper 
military authority, as to their conduct 
when away from the State, showed that 
the Ninth deserved a military punishment, 
which they received. Assuredly, their 
conduct in Boston, on their retitrn^ ^'de- 
serves the severest condemnation. '' 

A reader will say, '' But can the Lord's 



THE LOBB'S BAY BESCUEB. 95 

day be rescued?" Oh, can it not be! 
But never by stopping to doubt, and to 
look on. By this process, we have already 
lost our vantage-ground. Another will ask: 
'' Rescued immediately ? " It is now or 
never. The simple issue is, Will we have 
in this country the Sunday of Europe ? 
American travellers and residents there 
must not import it as they do. At first 
they wonder why people around them 
there do not know that there is such an 
institution as a Lord's day ; but a great 
many return home to forget that they 
ever had one here. The millions who 
come to our country from foreign lands, 
to take shares with us in the richest of 
heritages, must not be permitted to break 
up the old Firm in such a matter as the 
Lord's day. That is not in good taste, 
any more than it is fair dealing. Nay ! 
the institution is God's, not ours or theirs, 
and no man may dare to lay his hand 



96 THE LOBD'S BAY RESCUED, 

upon it. We do not want that Sunday 
of Europe. But it is not the man of for- 
eign birth who now strikes the heaviest 
blow in this country against the Lord's day. 

It is not an enemy ; then could I have borne it. 

What can be done ! Be there ** heart 
within/' for there is a *' God o'erhead." 
Ministers of the Gospel must come to the 
rescue. They who serve at the altar must 
defend the altar. They who serve the 
Lord Christ must stand for his day. They 
who depend upon a particular time for 
their work must make sure of that time. 
To their hands this stupendous interest 
is committed. They are not to confer with 
flesh and blood. They are not to consult 
their own ease, or convenience, or popu- 
larity. They are not to be swayed by a 
false public opinion, or intimidated by bold 
practice. They are not to fear the face 
of man. 



THE LORD'S UAY RESCUED. 97 

Many an one called '' minister " will 
fail us, but not the true man of God, 
though difference of opinion will be found 
as to incidental points. Let the particu- 
lar minister see the thing to be done by 
him, and then do it. Very certain it is, 
the times demand preaching — emphatic, 
zealous, positive — on a strict keeping of 
the Lord's day. The matter of filling in 
both parts of the day by church services, 
is a very grave matter. Sir Walter Scott 
has said : '* Give to the world one half 
of the Sunday, and you will find that 
religion has no stronghold on the other/' 
An intelligent layman remarked to the 
writer : '^ You ministers have done more 
to break up the Lord's day by your one 
sermon plan than any other class of 
men." 

Beyond all doubt, that plan has made 
it a great deal easier for parishioners 
and the masses of people to desecrate 



98 THE LOBB'S BAY BESCUEB. 

the holy day. Occupy the mind of the 
community on both parts of the day, and 
make sure of the fit things to do it. 
Other questions aside, nothing fills in the 
day quite so well as the two sermons ; 
and nothing fills the house of worship Hke 
them. Ordinarily preaching in the evening 
cannot become a compensation, or a safe 
substitute. As to ministerial vacations : 
Will not clergymen in cities and larger 
towns secure concert of action very much 
more than they do ? Can they not keep 
open their houses of worship, and not 
tempt their own flocks to go astray, nor 
shut Gospel doors in the face of summer 
visitors, and strangers, or of the floating 
population ? In any event, and at all 
events, ministers of the Lord Jesus Christ 
must stand by the Lord's day, his own 
and theirs. 

Chii7xJi members, natural allies in this 
matter, and Heaven-appointed, must stand 



THE LOBD'S DAY BESCUED. 99 

with their ministers. Entire churches of 
every name ought not to fail to do it. 
From the number of the friends of Christ, 
their widespread locaUties, their opportu- 
nities, their abihties, the blaster requires 
great things at their hands, They can 
breathe the right sentiments through their 
congregations and the community. They 
can speak out bravely. They can bear 
themselves blamelessly in their own prac- 
tice. The want above all want is, the ab- 
solute necessity is, that they should arouse 
themselves to the crisis : 

O/ice more unto the breach^ dear friends, yet once more ! 

But let Church member and minister 

be certified of this one thing at the out- 
set : '' This kind goeth not out but by 
prayer and fasting" — goeth not out but 
by godlike blow upon blow. We turn 
now for help to the nezvspapcr. 

Many of the religious papers have spoken 



100 THE LORD'S DAY RESCUED. 

out faithfully ; but they have not followed 
up the matter consistently and persistently 
in detail, with direct application, and as by 
authority. They do not act as upon an ex- 
igency, a crisis, and as determined to rise 
*'to the height of this great argument." 
The secular paper ranges everywhere, deals 
much with sacred topics, is at home in 
higher circles, knows how to reach " the 
ears of the groundlings." Great power, 
great responsibility ! But secular papers 
have not been equal to the trial. They 
have not been loyal to the Lord's day. 
With publishers, editors, correspondents, 
reporters, the temptations are too many, 
too insidious, too mighty. *^ The fashion of 
this world " is in their way. The paper is 
silent, or openly connives at the wrong, 
and now boldly espouses it. Sunday papers 
are in the land. They have no right before 
God to come. They have no right to stay. 
They sadly prove how the Lord's day has 



THE LOBD'S DAY BESCUED. 101 

lost hold upon the public conscience. Boys 
and men invade hotels with them, flaunt 
the rebel sheet on the street, and in the 
face of church-goers, put it into the hands 
of young men and others who can ill bear 
this new strain upon character, this new 
force against God's holy day. 

Of even date with this very writing, 
there comes a labored editorial in the Bos- 
ton Daily Advertiser, What does it say ? 
^' The fact of a very marked decrease in 
church-going is patent. The bottom fact 
of the problem is undeniably the drift of 
the age." Verily, precisely. And that 
" drift " must be turned, controlled, stopped. 
This is what the Lord's day is for. 

"Without doubt the pulpit is for in- 
struction. It was the people's paper. 
To-day the pulpit as an educator is a 
back seat, with the paper at the front." 
Modestly and sacredly put, whatever may 
be the facts in the case. But God made 



102 THE LOBD'S DAY RESCUED. 

the pulpit, and man makes the paper. 
Nor in mind and scholarship is the pul- 
pit ashamed. 

'' Sunday must stand or fall upon its 
merits." Yes, and nay. God will hold 
it up, man would not. Rather baldly 
and boldly chronicled by Tke Advertiser, 
'' The question of the uses of Sunday is 
a very wide one. Its first use, un* 
doubtedly, is as a day of rest, as the 
Jewish Sabbath was. Worship and recre- 
ation come next in order." We are 
greatly afraid of that word "recreation," 
and for the reason that the multitude 
are not afraid of it. ''The American 
Sunday will undoubtedly follow the old 
maxim that the Sabbath was made for 
man, and not man for the Sabbath.'' 

That declaration of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, somewhat more than a '' maxim," 
means what .'^ Not what T/ie Advertiser 
implies. Keep in mind that in Christ's 



THE LORD'S BAY BESCUED. 103 

time the day was to be rescued from 
the grim grasp of the Pharisees, while 
with us to-day, it is in the soft hands of 
" lovers of pleasures more than lovers of 
God," and then we shall be prepared to 
understand the make of it. And was it 
"made" for excursions of pleasure out 
of Boston? For regular Sunday trains 
there, or elsewhere ? For advance of 
stock in railroad and steamer, which coin 
on the Lord's day such bad money from 
a bar of good gold ? For the money- 
making or the gayety of watering-places ? 
The day was made ''for man." But 
what is man's vital point of interest, of 
need, of danger.? Man was not made 
*'for the Sabbath," but God yet threw 
the Sabbath over him, and put it upon 
him. As T/ie Advertiser professes to 
desire it, just let the Lord's day ''stand 
or fall upon its merits " — God's mind, 
and end, and will, being included. He 



104 THE LORD'S BAY BE S CUED. 

'' sanctified " the day ; what did he mean 
by that ? 

Good citizens and parents must rally 
for the Lord's day. What a happy sort 
of police force is the day in every city 
and town ; not for its own twenty-four 
hours, but throughout the whole week. 
What an indispensable help is it in the 
training of our children. What a body- 
guard for them in after life, in fierce 
temptations and deadly perils. Then the 
law protecting the Lord's day is always 
open to be enforced by citizen or parent. 
Resort to it. Use it as it is, or make 
it to fit the exigency. Be not afraid of 
the cry *' Church and State." The cry 
does not belong here. Listen to our 
teachers. Theodore D. Woolsey, LL. D., 
cites Sunday laws of Connecticut, Massa- 
chusetts, New York, analyzes, reasons, and 
concludes: *'It is not true that Sunday 
laws, as we have defended them, con- 



THE LORD'S DAY RESCUED. 1C5 

tain any residuum of a connection be- 
tween Church and State. They provide 
only for rest from labor of manual 
workers on one and the same day ; but 
demand nothing in the shape of worship, 
nor even of rest, so far as it is not 
public or preventive of the rest of others. 
If a State where the mass of men 
believe in the importance of religion, and 
of a day of rest for religious and other 
purposes, cannot do as much as has 
been laid down, its sphere of action 
must be limited indeed. We should have 
to go much farther than the abandon- 
ment of all Sunday laws, in a backward 
legislation founded on such an idea as 
this." Doctor Woolsey adds : '* The old 
English fines for non-attendance at the 
parish church, and everything like them, 
have disappeared from the world. But 
history shows that the nations which 
have been strict without narrowness in 



106 THE LORD'S BAY BESCUEB. 

the observance of Sunday, have had the 
purest morals, and have clung to their 
faith in times of religious decay ; so that 
if they had faults and follies in their 
severer codes which tended to brine: 
back a Jewish Sabbath, they were yet, on 
the whole, right in protecting the Lord's 
day by legislation." Theodore W. Dwight, 
LL. D., President of the Columbia Law 
School, gives us this result: ''It is well 
settled by decisions in courts of the 
leading States of the Union — for example, 
New York, Pennsylvania and Massachu- 
setts — that Christianity is a part of the 
law of the State." This decision carries 
with it the protection by law of the 
Lord's day. The day stands before us 
under that shield, and under the shield 
of very statute. Why do we throw the 
shield away ? Why do not strong men, 
men of conscience, men on the side of 
God, men of position, men of money, 



THE LOBB'S DAY BFSCUED. 107 

men of will-power, combine together to 
put our Sunday laws in force ? Is it 
because we are growing so weak as to 
all law and penalty — citizens, juries, mag- 
istrates, courts, officers ? Begone this 
childishness, this fear of a public shadow, 
this holy horror of doing right. Good 
men must be brave men, bold men. 
Law-breakers, conscience-stricken culprits, 
are very limp and manageable when 
brought face to fece with a righteous 
sentiment in any community, or brought 
bodily into a court of justice. Count 
not a Sunday law too good to be re- 
pealed, too bad to be put in force. Noth- 
ing is weaker and cheaper in the citizen. 
Nothing is more damaging to all law. 

We make our appeal to Sabbath- 
breakers themselves. To managers of the 
railroad; to owners of the steamer; to 
keepers of public houses in watering- 
places ; to visitors there; to ''lovers of 



108 THE LORD'S BAY RESCUED. 

pleasures more than lovers of God/' 
everywhere ; to the multitudes of different 
classes who dare so to profane what God 
has so signally '^sanctified/' Oh, let the 
Lord's day have rest ! 



<ivii 



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